- Director:
Ryan Murphy - AMG Rating:
- Genre: Comedy Drama
- Movie Type: Coming-of-Age, Tragi-comedy
- Themes: Mothers and Sons, Mental Illness, Estrangement
- Main Cast: Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin
- Release Year: 2006
- Country: US
- Run Time: 121 minutes
- MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Screen newcomer Joseph Cross portrays Augusten Burroughs in director Ryan Murphy's film adaptation of author Burroughs' best-selling personal memoir of the same name. A child of the 1970s whose alcoholic father Norman (Alec Baldwin) and delusional, unpublished poet mother Deidre (Annette Benning) serve as the dictionary definition of the word "dysfunctional," Augusten is sent by his mother to live with her eccentric psychiatrist Dr. Finch (Brian Cox) when his disagreeable parents ultimately decide terminate their turbulent marriage. Suddenly thrust into an environment that is as unfamiliar as it is unpredictable, young Augusten forms a curious relationship with the doctor's two whimsical daughters while learning to adapt and survive under even the most unusual of circumstances. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie GuideReview
Generally speaking, bad movies can be divided into two categories: movies that are too flawed to be called successes, and movies that are too torturous to be called anything but failures. Dividing its runtime between the awkwardly uncomfortable and the tediously boring, Running with Scissors undeniably fits into the latter. The central problem with the film is that nothing about the script can succeed on its own: it's built exclusively on painful and delicate subject matter. You're going to need irony, humor, and patience if you're going to make a movie about a 13 year old boy who's abandoned by his narcissistic drugged-out mother and detached alcoholic father, only to become sexually involved with a 35 year old schizophrenic man shortly after he's left in the care of an IRS ducking, scatologically obsessed psychiatrist whose equally insane family inhabits a decrepitly unkempt mansion.Oddly enough, while the bizarre story certainly lives up to author and main character Augusten Burroughs' (Joseph Cross) assertion in the opening narration that nobody will believe it, director Ryan Murphy himself seems to have identified with it too closely. With material that requires surgical precision, Murphy opts instead to stab wildly both at quirky humor and evocative intimacy, and he misses nearly every time. Despite a few well maneuvered sequences, he presents the horrendous and damaging events of the hero's life with uncomfortably close proximity, like a drawn-out personal anecdote that's destined to end with "I guess you had to be there." The lack of distance makes it impossible to laugh and the surplus of grotesquery makes it impossible to relate, leaving the viewer alienated and unmoved for nearly all of the film.
This isn't entirely Murphy's fault; the script appears to suffer from a malady typical of literary adaptations in that there are too many characters crammed into the two hour time-span for anyone besides the protagonist to possibly be fleshed-out. This is a fatal flaw in a movie where literally everyone else is crazy and even Augusten's confidante Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) shares strangely little screen-time after she reveals why she's messed up too.
This problem couldn't be solved by even the most impressive portrayal by a lead actor, and Cross hardly delivers that. However, despite a sometimes blank and meandering performance, he does a respectable job. In fact, none of the actors do particularly bad work here--they're just stymied by the circumstances of the film. There are some age issues with the casting; namely that while they're both age 20, Wood makes a realistic 14 year old but Cross does not; and even after being described as an "old maid," 35 year old Gwenyth Paltrow doesn't seem believable as Wood's sister. But these quibbles aren't really damning: the problem is that the production offers no insight into who any of these deeply damaged and unhinged people are or how they got to be so nuts. All this--coupled with an irritatingly hackneyed attempt at Wes Anderson-style over-the-top art direction--leaves nothing to relate to or even look at, taking Running with Scissors out of the running for even the most superficial cinematic enjoyment. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
Cast
- Annette Bening - Deidre Burroughs
- Brian Cox - Dr. Finch
- Joseph Fiennes - Neil Bookman
- Evan Rachel Wood - Natalie Finch
- Alec Baldwin - Norman Burroughs
